Got family who landed in Australia? This weekend,
Ancestry.com.au (Ancestry.com's Australia site) is giving free access to its
Australian Birth, Marriage and Death and Cemetery indexes,
containing more than 17 million records of those who were born,
married or died in Australia from 1788 until the early 20th
century. The free period runs through Monday, Oct. 1, 11:59 p.m.
Australian Eastern Standard Time on Monday 1 October, 2012
(that's 9:59 a.m. Monday EST in the United States). You'll need
to set up a free registration with the site to search the records.

Registration is open for FamilySearch's 2013 Rootstech genealogy
conference, taking place March 21-23 in Salt Lake City.
Organizers are planning for the 2013 conference to have a 40
percent larger exhibit hall and more classes, including a new
track for those beginning their family history research.
Registration fees range from $19 for a one-day pass to the
Getting Started track ($39 for all three days) to a $149 early
bird special (regularly $219) for a full three-day pass. Click
here to register for the conference.

It's a great time to find classes and presentations at genealogy
libraries and societies near you—many free or for a small fee. Check
the website of your local library or society or call to
ask about special events. Be sure to register for the event if it's
required.

Here's a sampling of Family History Month events across the country. Feel free to click Comments below and tell us about events you know of:

Cincinnati: The public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton
County will hold a Day with the Experts on Saturday, Oct. 6, with
genealogy tours, a Researching Your Civil War Online class,
consultations with experts and a presentation on Cincinnati's
legendary military officer Gen. William Haines Lytle. For more
details, call (513) 369-6905 or email history@cincinnatilibrary.org.

Conroe, Texas: The Montgomery County Library will have a
Genealogy Basics Boot Camp Oct. 10, a Get Your research into Shape
session on Oct. 20, and more. Here's
the library's October events calendar; hover over a listing to
learn more about it.

Fort Myers, Fla.: The Fort Myers-Lee County Public Library is
holding a Family History Month Series on Saturdays in October
covering topics such as tracking your research, using courthouse
records, finding censuses and substitutes and using immigration
records. Click
here to find out more.

Fort Wayne, Ind.: Of course the biggest public genealogy
library in the country, the Allen County Library, is celebrating
with classes on
cemetery research, state and regional research, census research,
photograph analysis, brick wall research and more. The library's
Genealogy Center also will have extended research hours on Oct. 26.
Learn
more and download a class schedule here.

Oakland, Calif.: The African-American Genealogical Society of
Northern California and the Oakland FamilySearch Center are holding
a Black Family History Day Oct. 13 from 1 to 5 p.m. at the
FamilySearch Center. Click
here to learn more about the event (including how to register
for a free family history consultation).

Santa Barbara, Calif.: The Santa Barbara County Genealogical
Society has classes all month long, including a Genealogy and DNA
workshop (Oct. 5 at 10 a.m.) and Beginning Genealogy (Oct. 8 at 10
a.m.). Registration is required, with a fee for nonmembers. You also
can go to free open houses on Sept. 30 and Oct. 13, 14, 20 and 27.
To learn more, go to the
society's website and click READ HERE to download a PDF
listing the events.

Tucson, Ariz.: The Pima County Genealogy Society and the Pima
County Public Library are teaming up to offer family tree
workshops at the library throughout October. See the
dates and times here.

Vermilion, Ohio: Ritter Public Library is holding genealogy
classes on researching a house history (Oct. 2 at 7 p.m.), creating
a computerized family photo project (Oct. 27 at 10 a.m.) and getting
started (Oct. 30 at 6:30 p.m.). Learn more on
the library's blog.

Just about everyone has an ancestor (or more) who served in the
military, and the records of their service can be rich
with genealogy answers: compiled military service records (aka CMSRs), pension
applications, bounty land warrants, draft registrations, discharge
papers, citations, regimental histories, burial records, veterans
questionnaires—the list goes on.

Your
registration includes access to the webinar recording to watch again
as often as you want, a 25-page handout of the presentation
slides, and a six-page handout of additional information on finding
online military records.

Types of records you might find at a
courthouse include civil and criminal court records,
naturally, but also deeds and mortgages, tax lists,
county commissioner meeting
minutes, vital records,
business licenses, voter registrations, cattle brand
registrations and more.

But depending on the place your family
lived, older records may have been turned over to a local or
state archives, historical society or library. Check in
advance before you plan a courthouse trip.

"Keep in mind is that most of these
facilities aren't really archives," Russell advised. "They're
working offices trying to keep up with the day-to- day
business of government. For the most part, they're not set up
to do a lot of hand-holding." Find out as much as you can
about the records you need—the date, a microfilm number or
volume and page number, where they're located, etc.—before you
go.

More things to know before you go:
Check online for courthouse hours, holiday schedules and access information.
The court may have limited hours when staff will pull files.
Some won't allow personal scanners or cameras. Different types
of records might be in different buildings or rooms. The local genealogy librarian and
genealogical society are good sources to ask ahead of time
about courthouse quirks.

See if the office holding the records
you need has a busy season. Russell gave this example: "If the
records you really want are the tax records, and the tax
office's busy season is October, then going there in October
just about guarantees that nobody is going to be available to
help you—and they may not even allow record lookups at that
time."

One chat participant advises you to dress
nicely—"so you look like you might be a lawyer or paralegal."
And if you have allergies to dust or mold, bring medication.

Look for an online or microfilmed
index so you have all the volumes and page numbers you need in
advance. Also see whether the Family History Libraryhas microfilm of the records you
need or even posted them online at FamilySearch.org.

"Even
'burned counties' have some records," Russell said. "And don't
forget many people re-recorded deeds, etc., after a courthouse
fire."

Out West in Nevada, you can step into your Silver State
ancestors' shoes at the Nevada State Museum
in Carson City, which features American Indian artifacts,
fossils, a recreated ghost town and underground mine, and more.

At the Western
Heritage Center in Billings, Mont., you can see special
exhibits on Montana Women at Work and how the railroad shaped
Billings. One of the museum's galleries replicates a 1930s dude
ranch lodge.

Among the many historic sites in Vermont is Burlington's Ethan Allen
Homestead Museum, where the home of the Green Mountain
Boys' leader has been restored.

This week MyHeritage.com
announced the launch of its automatic Record Matching premium
service. The service automatically searches the 4 billion
records on MyHeritage.com websites (which now include World Vital Records
and FamilyLink) for matches
to people in your MyHeritage family tree. MyHeritage users will
receive weekly email updates of new Record Matches and can visit
MyHeritage.com to review, filter, sort, confirm and reject
matches.

Genealogy search engine Mocavo
has acquired ReadyMicro,
a company that develops document digitization technology. On
its blog, Mocavo says it's planning
several exciting announcements in the coming weeks about
offering searchable records and forming partnerships to digitize
organizations' records "at a very low cost and even, in many
cases, at no cost." Stay tuned ...

Don't forget to enter our giveaway for a year's subscription
to our Family
Tree eBooks website—it's a digital library of dozens of
ebooks on genealogy, history, heirloom identification, sharing
and preserving your family history, and more, plus many issues
of Family Tree Magazine. Click
here to enter by September 30!

D. Joshua Taylor, the New England genealogy expert who delivered
genealogy news to several famous folks on NBC's "Who Do You think You
Are?" is hard at work putting together the Connecticut
Genealogy Crash Course webinar he'll present next Thursday,
Sept. 27, at 7 p.m. Eastern Time.

Many of the common resources for Connecticut research have
been published, transcribed, retranscribed, and republished in
various formats, so always look for the original source of the
information. In the webinar, we'll discuss key
resources for tracing Connecticut families, including the Barbour and Hale records
collections, which require a bit of sleuthing to use
effectively.

Connecticut keeps probate records by districts, rather than by
counties or towns. But there's a quick way to search all of
Connecticut's probate records through one central source! Tune
in to the webinar to learn how.

Connecticut's shared borders can cause dilemmas for
genealogists. We'll talk briefly about the complexities
surrounding the western border with New York and ideas for
tracing Connecticut families who might've spent time in and around Dutchess
County, NY.

If you have a chance, visit the Connecticut State Library. Although many of its resources are on microfilm (much of it
available through interlibrary loan or from the Family History
Library), there's nothing like researching
on-site and using resources in the original formats.

Last weekend's Family Tree University Virtual Genealogy Conference
was a great chance to learn from professional genealogy experts and
from other researchers like me via video classes, message boards and
live chats.

I'll bring you a few of my favorite conference tips and tidbits over the next
few weeks, starting with great apps from our Best Genealogy Tablet
Apps chat. Interestingly, they're not all expressly for doing
genealogy. These are some of the apps chat host Kerry Scott
and other participants use to track their trees, manage time,
digitize documents, search websites and more:

30/30 for time management—you work for 30 minutes or
another set length of time, then take a break (iPad)

Ancestry for displaying your Ancestry member tree and doing quick record lookups, though the
search capabilities are limited compared to the full version
of the site (Android and iPad)

AroundMe for finding gas stations and food in
unfamiliar towns
(iPad)

CamScanner for digitizing documents and turning them
into PDFs (iPad and Android)

Civil War Today for newspaper
accounts, diaries, letters and more from this day 150 years
ago (iPad)

CousinCalc for figuring out exactly how you're related
(iPad)

DropBox for sharing and accessing files across devices
(iPad and Android)

You expect to see Halloween decorations everywhere this time of year,
but can you believe some stores are already stocking Christmas
decorations?

We’re celebrating the joys of both holidays—as well as Valentine's
Day, St. Patrick's Day, Easter, Earth Day, the Fourth of July,
Thanksgiving, and other special days throughout the year—with
an upcoming book called Hilarious Holiday Photos.

Want to join in the fun? Share your funny holiday photos of people
or pets, and they could appear on the book’s Facebook page and even
in the book itself.

For example, this Halloween photo, courtesy
of a coworker here at Family Tree Magazine HQ, cracked us up: